On leadership ethics and the nature of 'winning'
Like many of you, I've been reading the developing story about an alleged betting scandal involving the Pakistan cricket team. I hope it doesn't end the way it did for Hanse Cronje (or Bob Woolmer, for that matter) - but it does raise a question that is relevant to all of us in the world of leadership and management...
How far is it OK to go in order to 'win'?
In this target-driven, KPI-obsessed, ultra-competitive, cost-constrained and downsized universe of ours, where is the line drawn between 'hard but fair' and 'cheating'?
- Is it ok, for example, for a very large organisation to exploit it's buying power in order to use 'destroyer pricing' to drive a smaller competitor out of business?
- Is it OK for a global organisation to exploit economic variations and thereby close bases in one country in favour of opening in another, cheaper location - even though it severely damages the regional community it leaves behind?
The recent economic meltdown raises many questions - and many that seem much larger than those I raise - however, as President Sarkozy said last Autumn; 'The economic crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so.'
After so many years of senior leaders who have been MBA-conditioned to run an organisation from 'the numbers', is it not time we considered some of those 'other models' to create a fairer society and organisations that put people (staff, customers, suppliers, communities) before shareholder returns?
And don't we, as the leadership community, have a responsibility to lead the line?
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Comments
I think you're right Nigel. Funnily enough I was reading a book by Rosabeth Moss Kantor recently that proposed just that, that the best companies nowadays (so called vanguard companies) put society at the centre of what they do.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supercorp-Vanguard-Companies-Innovation-Profits/dp/184668207X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283350319&sr=8-3
Thanks Matt. Happy to be on the same wavelength as Rosabeth, she's dynamite! I still have my well-thumbed copy of 'when giants learn to dance' on my office windowsill....
Nigel, I have been following the story of the doctor who admitted to deliberately cutting the rugby player's face to justify his replacement being brought on. It seems so black and white when reported on the news and it is probably too simplistic just to say the doctor was wrong to do what she did. Good people do bad things sometimes for sure. It seems that she was pressurised and regrets her actions. It struck me when listening to all the reportage that many, if not most, of us could easily have fallen from grace in the same way.
I would say that businesses need to take account of the context they create - does it encourage ethical behaviour or not? Are people pressurised to do unethical things? And I agree that they also need to examine their purpose.
When business schools first came into being they saw business as a vehicle for social good as well as to create 'shareholder value'. I have just researched and written a book on ethics at work (The Right Thing: an everyday guide to ethics in business) and in my research I was pleasantly surprised to find that more than 80% of respondents said that it is important for organisations to be ethical because it is 'morally right'. Around 40% said 'increasing profitability'. I reckon that companies that do the right thing will ultimately be more profitable because customers and employees will choose them over companies that are not. But I am an optimist!